Has a channel ever gone down to zero?

Gaijillionaire

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it seems like channels fall into three categories. The ones that take off like lightning, very few of those. The ones that grow slowly but steadily, which seem to be a few. And ones that go nowhere really, which seems to be most of.

But has a channel ever gone down in subscriber count in a major way? Is there any channel out there that had 10 million views or more then all the fans just gave up on it and moved elsewhere? If not then it seems to me that every channel will reach 100k in the end. Even if it's bots doing it 1000 years after we die aha
 
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KiddieToysReview

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Socialblade has a worst list, it's not loading for me at the moment, but the link is:

socialblade.com/youtube/top/bottom5001d/mostunsubscribed

You're right about the channels, only a small fraction explode on launch, a handful have steady/high growth, and the 99% just languish. 100k is pretty hard to crack, you need some decent viral content, several times, and lots more behind the scenes. It comes down to a mental game, maybe a financial or patience game as well. How long are you willing to try before throwing in the towel? Some can persevere for years. Some give up quickly when they realize it's not a get rich quick scheme. Others find they can't execute at the level required to compete with the top boy and girls. I come across abandoned kids/toys channels all the time. It takes a lot of $, time, energy to sink into this gig and if it's not paying the bills, you can really afford it? A hobby should be fun, but if it's losing you $1k/week, where's the fun in that (opportunity cost factored in).
 
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Austerpower

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Socialblade has a worst list, it's not loading for me at the moment, but the link is:

socialblade.com/youtube/top/bottom5001d/mostunsubscribed

You're right about the channels, only a small fraction explode on launch, a handful have steady/high growth, and the 99% just languish. 100k is pretty hard to crack, you need some decent viral content, several times, and lots more behind the scenes. It comes down to a mental game, maybe a financial or patience game as well. How long are you willing to try before throwing in the towel? Some can persevere for years. Some give up quickly when they realize it's not a get rich quick scheme. Others find they can't execute at the level required to compete with the top boy and girls. I come across abandoned kids/toys channels all the time. It takes a lot of $, time, energy to sink into this gig and if it's not paying the bills, you can really afford it? A hobby should be fun, but if it's losing you $1k/week, where's the fun in that (opportunity cost factored in).
It is still very much possible to persevere. I treated this as a hobby initially and after 3-4 years I had a million hits. You just got to maintain a theme. My theme was German military marches. Now I created a new channel and it is small but it is growing steadily.
 
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TheSwedishTraveler

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I don´t think someone has gone completely to zero, there´s people whose views has gone down signifinitely, and still have a small fanbase, but not completely zero!
 

xingcat

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I would guess that a channel with any sort of following would be difficult to get down to zero, not because of lack of interest by the subscribed, but because a lot of YouTube subscribers can abandon their accounts completely, and though YouTube cleans out inactive subscribers, they tend to stick around a lot.
 

sledrunner31

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I think a channel like that would just become a hollow shell. Most people arent all that organized with their sub list and Im guessing a large proportion of the subs are old accounts or barely active ones so they wont be unsubscribing unless they get deleted.

If you have a large channel and dont want to do it anymore I would think you could sell it just for having a lot of subs. Probably make a nice chunk of change if your channel is big enough.